Tom McMahon

The Man Who Writes Term Papers For A Living Tells His Story

An excerpt:

From my experience, three demographic groups seek out my services: the English-as-second-language student; the hopelessly deficient student; and the lazy rich kid.

For the last, colleges are a perfect launching ground—they are built to reward the rich and to forgive them their laziness. Let's be honest: The successful among us are not always the best and the brightest, and certainly not the most ethical. My favorite customers are those with an unlimited supply of money and no shortage of instructions on how they would like to see their work executed. While the deficient student will generally not know how to ask for what he wants until he doesn't get it, the lazy rich student will know exactly what he wants. He is poised for a life of paying others and telling them what to do. Indeed, he is acquiring all the skills he needs to stay on top.

The Three Ways That A College Education Can Pay Off

From Glenn Reynolds:

College is often described as a path to prosperity, but is it? A college education can help people make more money in three different ways.

First, it may actually make them more economically productive by teaching them skills valued in the workplace: Computer programming, nursing or engineering, say. (Religious and women's studies, not so much.)

Second, it may provide a credential that employers want, not because it represents actual skills, but because it's a weeding tool that doesn't produce civil-rights suits as, say, IQ tests might. A four-year college degree, even if its holder acquired no actual skills, at least indicates some ability to show up on time and perform as instructed.

And, third, a college degree -- at least an elite one -- may hook its holder up with a useful social network that can provide jobs and opportunities in the future. (This is more true if it's a degree from Yale than if it's one from Eastern Kentucky, but it's true everywhere to some degree).

While an individual might rationally pursue all three of these, only the first one -- actual added skills -- produces a net benefit for society. The other two are just distributional -- about who gets the goodies, not about making more of them.

The NCAA's Dismal Graduation Rate

Excerpts from Eugene Kane:

In reality, many players aren't actual students as much as they are semi-professionals on loan to their university until they can cash in on their talents in the professional leagues. Most times, they never graduate.

The sorry performance of many top NCAA schools when it comes to the graduation rates for African-American athletes has been reported for years with little change.

My top pick in this year's office pool is Kentucky. According to NCAA statistics, Kentucky has been one of the worst schools in terms of graduating black basketball players over the last decade, with black player graduation rate never higher than 29%.

For all NCAA Division I schools, white college basketball athletes graduate at an 81% rate while black players are at 56%.

Some black athletes share in the blame for not taking advantage of scholarships that provide a free education. But just as clearly, March Madness pours enough money into the schools' coffers that there should be more attempt by administrators to guarantee the term student-athlete is more than just a moniker.

The Top Ten Myths of Higher Education

Via Joanne Jacobs:

1. There is no liberal bias in academia.
2. Everybody should go to college.
3. Academia is more noble than the business community.
4. Diversity makes everything better.
5. All faculty research is necessary and/or important.
6. Academic freedom means anything goes.
7. Higher Education drives the economy.
8. Natural aptitude doesn’t matter.
9. Morality is relative.
10. All cultures are equally good.

Mental Calculation: A Math Lesson In A Russian School In 1895

Mental Calculation: A Math Lesson In A Russian School In 1895

N. P. Bogdanov-Belsky painted this in 1895. Can you solve the problem presented before the disciples of this old Russian village school? Remember, this has to be mental calculation, no computer aid allowed. Here it is:

I have just one question: How did we ever win the Cold War?

What's Wrong With Higher Education Explained With Just Three Graphs From Professor Mark J. Perry's Carpe Diem Blog

What's Wrong With Higher Education Explained With Just Three Graphs From Professor Mark J. Perry's Carpe Diem Blog

Parents: Do Not Pay The Tuition For Any Classes That End In The Word “Studies”

From Burt Prelutsky:

If I were running things, most high school grads would enter trade schools. America will always need nurses, plumbers, carpenters, glaziers and mechanics. What nobody needs is some 21-year-old schnook who’s wasted four years and most of his inheritance majoring in black, Hispanic or lesbian studies. And then, to make matters worse, because like the Scarecrow of Oz, they have a sheepskin, they’re actually convinced they’re smarter than their parents.

One of my readers, Penny Alfonso, of Glendale, California, shared a conversation she had with her daughter. “I told her I won’t pay the tuition for any classes that end in the word “studies”. I have also told her that while I have no right to tell her how to think, if she comes home hating America and spewing the lies of the leftists, I will tell her I love her, and that she has the right to believe whatever she wants to believe, but I don’t have to pay for it. In the 20 years of her life, if she’s learned nothing else, she has learned that I am completely serious about this.”

If more parents adopted this attitude, the state of education would improve in a hurry. The lefty professors want to mold young minds, but the administrators just want your money. So use your clout where it counts. Adopt Mrs. Alfonso’s declaration as a Bill of Parental Rights.

The Solution To Binge Drinking On College Campuses

From the New York Times Letters to the Editor via here:

The solution to binge drinking problems on campuses is simple: college curriculums need to be more rigorous. If college programs required their students to put in a significant number of hours per week doing work related to their classes, campus drinking would soon find itself limited to one or two nights a week.

Furthermore, those few nights a week would be more moderate, since the students would drink knowing that they needed to get up in the morning and keep hacking away at that thermodynamics problem set.

I suspect that one of the main reasons students who aren’t in college drink less than college students is that they have to get up in the morning and go to work at a real job, where they are accountable for their behavior.

Caroline Figgatt
Munich, July 1, 2009

The writer is a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

SAT Math Scores: Male vs Female

SAT Math Scores: Male vs Female

The Wussification of America

An excerpt from Spike Spencer

*A detainee was shot in the groin with a BB gun during an interrogation incident. The interrogator had pointed it at the eyes and faces of other detainees before the emasculating testicle shot took place.

*A detainee was ritualistically beaten and left with a wound 7 inches around and 1/2 inch deep on his butt that required two surgeries. Apparently the detainee was told that it would “toughen up your hide.”

*3 soldiers stripped a 19 year old detainee down to his boxers and started firing BBs at him from about 5 feet away. They then tried to get the detainee to smoke marijuana and drink alcohol, which he refused.

*Soldiers made detainees lie down naked in a makeshift pool filled with six inches of ice water, beer, kitchen garbage, and urine. Other soldiers took turns standing on a stepladder above the pool and attempted to drop raw eggs into the mouth of the detainees lying in the fluid.

This torture is detestable! Outrageous! Unacceptable! Intolerable! And just about as stupid as the rest of the arguments about torture that are making the rounds on Capitol Hill right now.

Here’s your assignment. Replace the world soldier with “Frat Boy Jack Ass.” Replace the word detainee with “Pledge Boy Dillhole.” And replace interrogation with the word “hazing.”

There you go folks. The “torture” of our very own young college going skulls full of mush is, in my opinion, harsher than anything we’ve dished out to the worthless murdering sacks of pig poop that are the terrorists.